


Eighteen and Counting

by MuseofWriting



Series: Per Aspera Ad Astra [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Birthday, Companion Piece, Gen, Loneliness, references to shiro and keith's dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 18:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16454735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuseofWriting/pseuds/MuseofWriting
Summary: Keith turns eighteen, alone in a small house in the desert.(Note: this is technically a prequel to Written in Sand, but can be read as a one-shot)





	Eighteen and Counting

**Author's Note:**

> Set between the Kerberos mission and finding the Blue Lion.

            The morning passed like any other. Sun slanting mercilessly bright through the window woke him, twisting and shoving the sheet away from him into a pile on the corner of mattress, half of it slipping off the edge to pool on the floor. The water in the bathroom ran brown with dust and sand for a few seconds before clearing, and he raked his fingers through wet hair, shaking strands of black free to slide down to the drain. He dug a protein bar out of the corner of a cupboard and dropped onto his couch to eat it, picking up the calculations he’d given up on in frustration yesterday.

            It wasn’t until early afternoon, numbers swimming nonsensically before his eyes, that he tossed the calculation sheet away in disgust and picked up his journal to give his brain a break. As he absently went to write the date, he did a double-take – and then he started counting, to make sure.

            Once he’d counted twice, he put the notebook back down slowly and stared blankly at the corkboard on the opposite wall. His eyes drifted to the telltale bump in the map where Shiro’s picture was pinned underneath, and then he deliberately looked away.

            “Fuck,” he said under his breath. His voice split and choked from disuse. He cleared his throat. “Fuck,” he repeated, just as soft. He picked up the journal and wrote “Math is stupid and we never should have invented it.” He put the journal down. He stood up and walked to the kitchen, opened every cupboard and looked through them. There were some cans of soup. An unopened box of rice. Boxed mac and cheese. God he was tired of boxed mac and cheese. The fridge and freezer were similarly bare. A few frozen pizzas. Mustard. A single egg. An apple with a soft spot growing on its side. He fished out the apple and ate it, biting around and around the soft spot until it was the last piece growing out of the apple’s core like a tumor. He tossed the apple core in the trash. He closed the cupboards and dropped into a chair, drumming his fingers on the kitchen table for a moment. Then he rubbed a hand over his face, went back into the main room of the house, and pulled the calculation sheet towards him with grim determination.

            It wasn’t until long after the sun had set and he’d poked his way mournfully through another meal of box mac and cheese that he let himself think about the date again. He scaled the ladder up to the attic, grabbed a spare blanket, and carried it downstairs and outside. He picked up his telescope as he went. He walked out into the desert, up and over dunes again and again until the house was almost out of sight. Then he spread the blanket out on the ground and dropped down to sitting. After a moment’s hesitation, he kicked off his boots, stuffing his socks inside them, and used them to help weight down the blanket corners. He let his left foot trail off the edge of the blanket, toes curling through sand, cool in the desert night.

            He sat there for almost half an hour before he picked his telescope up and set it up properly. Pressing an eye against it, he sought out constellations. He started simple. The Big Dipper. Find the rest of Ursa Major. The Little Dipper. The rest of Ursa Minor. Orion. Pisces. Keep going. Hercules. Cassiopeia. Aries. Andromeda. Draco. Saggita. Find Mars. Find Jupiter. Find Venus. Mercury, Saturn. He swung the telescope past the moon, and it was blinding.

            He shoved back from the telescope, lay back on the blanket. His hair spread and fluttered in a puff of breeze, and sand tossed up against his bare feet. The sky was ablaze above him, stars burning away the night. So softly it could be mistaken for the desert wind, he sang.

            “Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me. Happy birthday dear Ke-eith, happy birthday to me.”

            Birthdays were stupid, Keith thought. They were nothing more than societal constructs trying to make the universe tangible — just more math. A life measured in increments of 365.25 spins of the Earth.

            His dad used to bring him here for his birthdays. It was rare they could get away on the exact day, but always at some point during the month his dad would toss him in the back of the car and they’d drive out to the shack for a day or two or three, and his dad would tell him he was a miracle from the stars. He’d show him the night sky, trace constellations with Keith’s chubby fingers, tell him how many light years away each star was and make each number a story. Keith had known the distance to Polaris before he’d known how to spell. He’d never cared much for the maths and science of it, but he liked the way his dad talked about it, as if the stars were a place you could touch if you just reached far enough. Then they would go back inside and he’d get a midnight cupcake with a single candle in it, and he would blow it out and eat the cupcake like his life depended on it. If he had ever made wishes, he no longer remembered them.

            After, he’d thrown fits on his birthdays. He would refuse to eat cake. He hated cake, he decided, too sweet and gooey and too often topped with blocks of sugar frosting that tasted like iced cardboard. He had no interest in cards or presents. He just wanted to be left the hell alone. He fled to a tree or the roof or a park and tilted his head to the night sky and painted the constellations with his fingers until he could breathe again. Twice, that was the day he’d run away. At some point, it must have gotten put into his file that birthdays were ‘a problem’, because at some point foster families stopped mentioning it at all. Or maybe he’d just wound up far enough down the list to be with people who simply didn’t care.

            Shiro must’ve sneaked his admissions file to find out his birthday, because Keith knew he hadn’t told him. It had sent a jolt of cold fury through him when Shiro, with his infuriatingly gentle optimism, had wished him _happy birthday_ for the first time. He didn’t _celebrate_ birthdays, he didn’t _ask_ to be wished happiness for another year of loneliness, he hadn’t told anyone the date in years because _he didn’t want them to know_. But he hated lashing out at Shiro, so he just bit his lip and crushed down his anger. To his credit, Shiro never tried to throw him a party or even, as far as Keith knew, told anyone else. Every year, he got a quiet _happy birthday_ and after that first year, a small gift. A new set of gloves. A book on piloting. A Swiss Army knife. He muttered his thank you’s and ducked his head and hurried away. And now, for the first year in a while, he was back to no one bothering him about it, no gifts, no happy wishes, just himself under the stars. So it was stupid, and hypocritical, and completely unfair that for once he wished he wasn’t completely alone.

            He folded his arms behind his head to make a pillow and let his toes trail through the sand beside the blanket. He cast his eyes up just as a shooting star crossed the sky, and imagined he could touch it if he just reached far enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a bit late, but I've been meaning to write Keith's counterpart to Lance's birthday fic for forever, and I needed to wait until he'd actually, ya know, appeared in the fic to do it. Please leave kudos and comments if you enjoyed!
> 
> If you've read WiS, there's an Easter egg -- I'll be mad impressed if you spot it.


End file.
